


I Live By My Own Law

by DefaltManifesto



Category: Black Panther (2018), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Eventual Happy Ending, Everybody Lives, M/M, Magical Realism, Non-Explicit Sex, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Black Panther (2018), Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 05:33:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14909306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DefaltManifesto/pseuds/DefaltManifesto
Summary: He doesn’t know if it’s the ancestors or his instincts. It does not matter. M’Baku listens.





	I Live By My Own Law

**Author's Note:**

> Writing this was sort of a religious experience. It was supposed to be a collab (sorry my friend) and then it turned into this whole thing and I just. Had to finish it. I wrote it while at work, came home and wrote while eating, and kept writing and now I'm posting it and I'm so tired and I hope I did it justice. I did some world-building with the Jabari culture based on some interviews. Comments are loved. You can find me at tumblr @ defaltmanifesto. 
> 
> Title from Pray For Me by The Weeknd & Kendrick Lamar

Raised on a diet of tradition, hard work, and cut throats politics, M’Baku can’t help but view T’Challa as the soft boy his upbringing teaches him to see. Of course, all Wakandans are that way. They rely on vibranium and herbs for their strength but take that away and there was little left worth note as far as he could see. So when T’Chaka’s murder makes national news and T’Challa returns home to a grieving but welcoming Wakanda, he knows he cannot let his rule come to pass.

Shuri represents everything he stands against – technology not just for the people but for the sake of itself. For fun. For power. Perhaps T’Challa will use it for good but what about who comes after? What about a challenger who would seek to gain land and control? He will not have it.

M’Baku cannot have it.

 

-.-

 

The Jabari know more of war. They have skirmishes on their borders with militia men and religious zealots, men who they stand up to through sheer force of will and determination. They are warriors capable of defeating foes because at their core they are stronger and better people. It is why he is confident as he stands across from T’Challa with warm water rushing around their ankles that he will win. T’Challa, without his magic and science was just a man.

T’Challa makes him work for it but only a little. It isn’t long before he’s holding both the man and victory in his grasp and he knows he will take it. He has the strength. He has the conviction. The will.

And then T’Challa’s eyes meet his and for the first time, fear douses him like a hot flame. It burns away the strength born of training day in and day out in a blizzard, melting away a hardened ice exterior built on instinct. His will crumbles like an avalanche before T’Challa’s and before long he finds himself on his back. Water pours over them and he’s aware, painfully, that T’Challa is behind him and after this is the awareness that T’Challa has given him three choices not two.

Death by choking. Failure by yield. Or…M’Baku could take them both over the edge.

He doesn’t in the moment know if T’Challa gave him the choice intentionally, if he trusts M’Baku enough to put the fate of Wakanda in his hands for a few brief seconds. Perhaps he is just a fool and doesn’t realize M’Baku still has a foothold with which to send them both over the edge. But…maybe he is willing to trust.

"Your people need you.”

M’Baku yields.

 

-.-

 

It bothers him for days. He wrestles with wondering what T’Challa’s motivation had been. Had he trusted M’Baku to make the right choice? If so, was it a sign of weakness or strength? He put the fate of Wakanda in the hands of a man, a tribe, who had been nothing but hostile even if civil war hadn’t waged between them in generations. It was foolish even if he felt in his gut that M’Baku would make the right choice. Ruling from emotion could not succeed.

Or maybe it could.

He trains on the mountains in the wind and the snow and in his mind’s eye, all he can see is T’Challa’s eyes the moment before he changed the course of the fight. There had been rage there, but beneath that understanding. As though he didn’t just _hear_ M’Baku’s words but saw him, understood him, _knew_ him and his people. His victory had not been for his country or his people, but for M’Baku and his tribe.

He screams his rage into the harsh wind and sinks his staff into the snow. It’s not the loss that upsets him. He is not the strongest of their tribe. Strength alone does not make a leader no matter if they rely on ritualistic combat. But T’Challa had exposed within him not just a physical failure but a mental and moral incompetence as well, even if no one else could see it. He’d been ready to sacrifice himself or both of them before T’Challa’s urging had changed his mind. It was only thanks to his understanding that M’Baku hadn’t made a mockery of his people and himself.

M’Baku sits in the snow beside his staff and closes his eyes.

When their training master deems them ready, Jabari youth ascend the mountain to where the sacred tree’s roots crack through the mountain side and cover themselves in snow. They let the cold seep into their bones, their souls. They let it harden them so they can never truly break. The body stings, aches, burns, but the mind remains calm and unmovable. If the world floods, they float. If the world burns, they melt to survive and freeze once more with their enemies inside. Some claim to see the ancestors. The faithful believe it has to be them, but those with less religious leanings file it away as a hallucination even when they too rise from the snow with an edge over even the best trained man.

M’Baku does not know what he believes, or if the ancestors or the tree imbue them with hidden strength as they purge themselves in the snow the way Wakandan kings swallow the herb. No single Jabari could match the Black Panther. But even if they do not, there is something about the body screaming for death and the mind meeting its wish with a steady refusal that makes each of them come out stronger. Or, the body wins and the weak mind succumbs and they do not rise at all. Their strength is built on will and if one does not have the will to deny the body death when pushed to the brink, they cannot float or melt to survive when it matters most.

He’d nearly let his honor and pride kill him. Shatter him. It was unacceptable.

The wind whistles around him as he opens his eyes, shrieking.

_the falls, the falls, you must get to the falls_

He doesn’t know if it’s the ancestors or his instincts. It does not matter. M’Baku listens.

 

-.-

 

T’Challa’s eyes don’t focus. M’Baku can’t be sure if he even knows who he is, but he feels T’Challa’s fingers curl against the fur of his coat so at least he knows that M’Baku is no threat and really, that’s all that matters.

He hadn’t seen the fight, but he knows Wakandan custom just as any other born within its borders. The only ones who may challenge outside the day of coronation is someone from within the ruling family. That means betrayal by his sister or mother, or there’s someone else in Wakanda, someone who is a threat not just to the Jabari but the rest of the world. That doesn’t matter now though. Those thoughts will wait for later. For now, he holds T’Challa close to his chest as he climbs back up the mountain, legs burning from exertion after a day already spent training in its grasp. It doesn’t matter. It’s repentance, he thinks, if not from his ancestors than from himself. Trial by ice once more to atone for the sin of needing another man to show him how to be a true leader. He knows where he must take T’Challa if he will survive.

The mountain fights him. Snow obscures any light, any of the traditional markings that guide him to the summit where he’d become a true Jabari. It piles upon his shoulders and the ground. It comes to his knees, then his thighs, but he does not stop, instead letting his mind sink into the cool calm. He is the center of the storm and cannot be touched, not when his people and the man in his arms depend on him. Perhaps they are one and the same.

The warriors who guard the summit rush to his aid when he crests the final hill. He shakes his head and steps out of the drift on trembling legs but he walks unaided to the center where he and those before him had been buried. Gentle as he dares, he rests T’Challa’s frozen body upon the ground and covers all but his face in snow. He’s done as his ancestors bid him.

The rest lies in T’Challa. In Wakanda.

M’Baku collapses beside him and slips away.

 

-.-

 

Burning. His skin burns and boils as he claws his way to the world once more. The pain recedes as his eyes open, the warmth of soft blankets soothing him. He knows he should rest but it is only a matter of time before some Wakandan comes knocking on their door looking for their fallen King or an army and he must be ready.

He pulls on his clothes and grabs the staff he’d received so many years ago upon passing his own test.

He feels now as he did then, like he’d been born anew, but when he looks his battle-worn hands look no different.

“We’ve spotted them,” the guard outside his chamber door says. “We are holding them until you are ready.”

“You can send them,” M’Baku says.

He heads for the throne room in a body that aches and yet doesn’t. It feels like death and rebirth all at once, like he’s caught in a cycle that must be broken but that he himself cannot break.

Before his people, before T’Challa’s family, he shows none of the uncertainty that sits in his chest. He plays with them until he’s certain of their intentions even if now he is certain of T’Challa’s. He leads them up the summit and the feeling in his chest beats faster, looping in on itself, eating itself, and when he lays on T’Challa it is only years of training that keep his face still.

He knows he’s the only one that sees it. T’Challa’s family rush to their fallen king’s side, unaware of the blue glow in his face, like the weathered bark of the sacred tree. He looks at his hands once more and sees the glow upon his own skin and knows that what he’s done has connected them to each other as one people, the way the Jabari have not been with the rest of Wakanda in generations.

If T’Challa survives.

He turns his back out of respect as they start the ritual but he does not leave. His feet feel rooted to the spot, as though their ancestors have decided that they will both go back down the mountain or perish together. The wood of his staff creaks in his grip. His eyes shut. He searches for the calm that he needs and clings to it like a babe to its mother, not wanting to be washed away because of the failures of another man.

_have you learned nothing?_

M’Baku looks to the sky. There is no calm for him to find, no fight for him to win, no storm to weather. He had done that already. T’Challa’s fate, the fate of Wakanda, had depended on him. Now, his own and that of the Jabari would have to rely on T’Challa. He takes a deep breath and lets his eyes slide shut again and this time, he does not search for the calm.

M’Baku throws himself to fate and waits for T’Challa to catch him.

 

-.-

 

The glow is gone. Neither he nor T’Challa radiate it but when they stand across from each other alone in the throne room, he can tell by the look in T’Challa’s eyes that he knows deep within him something has changed. The moment he’d awoken from the snow, M’Baku had felt everything come into focus, clear and strong. They are one now. Whether that means T’Challa is one with the Jabari remains to be seen.

He approaches T’Challa speaking not for himself, but for his people.

“And now, you speak of us.”

“I cannot speak for past kings. But an enemy sits on the throne.”

He sees the resolve in T’Challa’s eyes, the same look he’d seen just days before as they’d hovered at the edge of a waterfall together but not united. He knows what the Jabari will do.

M’Baku lies.

 

-.-

 

He leaves with his warriors as soon as T’Challa and his allies head for the Great Mound. He will not the one chance the Jabari have had at being equals with their countrymen go to waste. It is a test as well, to see if the connection between them is something for them alone. Perhaps Wakanda can settle its affairs without its estranged brothers and sisters, and if so, M’Baku supposes it means that the time for the Jabari to unite them is still far in the future.

When it becomes clear that Wakanda will not survive without him, without the Jabari, he takes his warriors into the fray.

Throwing W’Kabi from his perch as they rush the field brings him more satisfaction than he thought it would. The Jabari, for all their disagreements with the Wakandan way of life, had agreed two generations ago not to war among themselves again and despite abuse and neglect, they had kept that promise. And here, this weak man, the man T’Challa claimed as his best friend, had betrayed him and Wakanda at the first chance.

M’Baku won’t let his betrayal of them go unpunished.

 

-.-

 

He does not see T’Challa for several weeks. When he comes, he comes alone to the study M’Baku spends his free time in. He smiles when he enters, hands behind his back and he ducks his head in quiet greeting before taking a seat in one of the spare chairs across from where M’Baku sits.

“I wanted to speak with you alone before any formal proceedings,” T’Challa says. “I never got to say thank you for what you did that day. My warriors, my family, they would have died had you not intervened.”

M’Baku debates playing the fool again, but this is just them. This is his personal space, not a throne room.

"You said you cannot speak for past kings. I am willing to give you that chance,” M’Baku says.

T’Challa shakes his head and laughs. “It’s more than that. Up there, on the mountain. That was real, was it not?”

M’Baku uncrosses his legs and leans back in the chair. “And what did you see?”

“I knew I had to go back,” T’Challa says, eyes locking with M’Baku’s. “I had the will, the drive, but I could feel how much my body hurt and I couldn’t convince myself to let go. But then…there was a voice. It said ‘ _you must tell the body no’._ It sounded like you.”

M’Baku swallows, heart pounding. He wants to remain aloof but he can’t help himself, leaning forward on his knees and T’Challa mirrors him and soon, their foreheads touch and T’Challa’s hand tightens on his knee as his own curls around his neck.

“I do not know what it is,” M’Baku says. “We underwent our own trials but we could not survive them without a piece of one another. I could not have carried you up that mountain if it weren’t for the desire to help you as you helped me and you would not have woken without the mental strength that makes us Jabari. We are connected, you and I. If you had failed…”

He doesn’t realize there are tears on his face until T’Challa’s thumbs wipe them away. “But I did not. And neither did you. We are here and M’Baku I feel like I have been waiting for you my whole life and perhaps that is foolish. I do not claim to know what Bast or our ancestors want from us. I cannot claim what I feel is truly me and not something I’m being compelled to feel but I cannot…I will not let us nor our countries fracture and split again.”

M’Baku closes his eyes and holds T’Challa close. The tears feel like grief and relief all at once, as though the weight of their ancestors’ sorrow presses down upon them even as they vow to never let it happen again.

"T’Challa…I promise you. The Jabari will always come to your aid as long as you vow to come to ours,” M’Baku says, forcing the words out from a throat too tight for anything but the truth.

T’Challa nods, takes M’Baku’s hand in his and presses his lips to the knuckles before holding it tight in his hand. “And Wakanda will always come to your aid as long as you’ll have us. I promise you this, M’Baku.”

M’Baku closes his eyes and decides to trust.

 

-.-

 

They steal moments together. Whether it’s some mystical bond or their own feelings, they find themselves drawn to one another both as kindred spirits and as lovers. They spend hours in M’Baku’s study, pouring over the history of their ancestors, the wars and skirmishes, the betrayals. Other times, they visit in a more formal fashion and solidify their individual truce with treaties.

And at night, somehow, they find their way into one another’s rooms. M’Baku has had lovers before and he knows T’Challa has as well, but this is beyond love or attraction. Watching T’Challa ride him, sheets pooling at their waists as the light of the full moon streams through the windows, makes him feel like he can’t breathe. He leaves bruises on T’Challa’s hips some nights, and soothes them with kisses and a soft caress on others.

The first time T’Challa takes him, they do it against the same window. M’Baku stares out at the city as the man who truly holds a part of his soul moves within him with gentle thrusts that leave him feeling as though he’s been cracked wide open. It’s a vulnerability he’s never felt. T’Challa holds him in strong but gentle hands as he moves, kisses words of love into his shoulders, and leaves him whole when they’re done.

Their relationship brings M’Baku a peace he’s never known.

M’Baku is still surprised when it’s ripped away.

 

-.-

 

“You should stay in the mountains,” T’Challa says.

“The Jabari are not children in need of protection.” M’Baku slams his staff on the throne room floor, prompting T’Challa to go still in his pacing.

“I cannot lose you,” T’Challa says, quick steps bringing him to stand before M’Baku.

“And I will not lose you because I was not by your side,” M’Baku says. “What, did you think that mountain hike was just for fun? For resources? It was for you and your people. _My_ people.”

"Our…people,” T’Challa says, then closes his eyes and rips back away to resume pacing. “I am afraid, M’Baku. This enemy…they will bring aliens like this world has never seen and they will not stop until they get what they came for. This is like nothing we have ever faced.”

“No, it is not,” M’Baku says. “But these aliens…they have faced Earth before, these Avengers…but no one in this universe has faced the united might of a truly united Wakanda. You must trust your people, me, and yourself.”

T’Challa doesn’t face him. “What if it is not enough?”

M’Baku steps up beside him, arm sliding around his shoulders. “Then we die, side by side. We are connected, you and I. We go together or not at all.”

T’Challa leans into him.

M’Baku prepares to die.

 

-.-

 

He does not prepare to lose T’Challa. Okoye comes to him with tears in her eyes and he knows before she speaks that his King, his soul, lays as nothing but a pile of leaves at the foot of a tree. Those who survive convene in the palace and M’Baku watches as a god argues with a super soldier about what to do next. He watches as Shuri approaches quietly along the side of the room with a familiar silver necklace in hand.

“No.”

His voice brings silence to the room. Shuri freezes.

“I will not take that suit,” M’Baku says.

“M’Baku, we’re going to need everyone in this at their best. That suit makes you close to that,” the American, Steve Rogers, says.

“Wakanda needs someone to rule,” Okoye says.

“It has a ruler,” M’Baku says, using his staff to stand. “You, Rogers, have a best friend. Ask me how I know.”

"H-how do you know?” Banner asks when no one else speaks.

"Because, several months ago something happened that connected T’Challa and I to each other. If he dies, I die. If I die, he dies. The ancestors, our gods, whatever higher power you all believe, made it so and as you can see, I am not dead, which means things are not what they seem. So. I will not take up the Black Panther mantle, nor will the rest of you lose yourselves to your grief and shock and sorrow. Have I made myself clear?”

He surveys the room. It appears, as far as he can tell, his words have hit their mark.

M’Baku retires to T’Challa’s room.

 

-.-

 

The mountain was nothing compared to this. Every step takes twice the energy as though he’s living for two people and he supposes in a way he is. His body says no each step, each fight, each time he fells an enemy as Thor fights to restore their reality to the way it was meant to be. It begs for death and he tells it no.

It screams and he says no.

It bleeds and he says no.

He will not.

He cannot.

No. No. No.

 nonono

_nonono_

“M’Baku. I am here.”

M’Baku lets T’Challa catch him.

 

-.-

 

"This sunset…it is the last thing Prince N’Jadaka saw.”

M’Baku sits beside T’Challa on the cliff that overlooks Wakanda. “Why did you bring me here?”

“I do not know,” T’Challa says with a small laugh. He holds M’Baku’s hand tight in his own. After they saved the world, no one had been fooled by their attempts to pretend they were nothing more than fast friends. M’Baku is perfectly fine with that. T’Challa’s hand feels right in his own. “He was so scared, truly. He was alone from the moment my father killed his and out of that loneliness, a monster rose to survive because he would have died if he had not become what he feared.”

"That does not mean-“

“I know, I know,” T’Challa says. He rests his head on M’Baku’s shoulder. “His actions are his own, even if my father’s actions set him on the path. I just…the sunset is much better together, is it not?”

M’Baku presses a kiss to T’Challa’s head and squeezes his hand tight. “Yes. It is.”

They stay there, pressed together, until the stars come out.


End file.
